Humans 5 May 2021
Watch Oxygen, Alexandre Aja’s sci-fi thriller, is the story of a woman with amnesia (Mélanie Laurent) who is trapped in a cryogenic chamber. Her oxygen is running out and she will survive only if she remembers who she is. On Netflix from 12 May.
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Crooked Cats tell their own bloody tales in anthropologist Nayanika Mathur’s study of how big cats – tigers, leopards and lions – come to prey on humans. Ecological collapse is an important reason why such attacks occur, but is it the whole story?
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Last chance
Cosmos: Reverse perspective looks at Earth from space through collages and graphics, capturing the changes we have lived through since Yuri Gagarin’s first orbit. Online from Pushkin House until 18 May.
Mike Follows Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands, UK
Salamanders, such as axolotls, hatch in ponds alongside hungry siblings that nibble on them. This may explain why they evolved the ability to regenerate missing limbs and gills. In contrast, humans have a rolling programme of replacing about 10 billion cells per day.
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This hints at a possibility that we have inherited the ability to regenerate limbs, yet the relevant bits of genetic code may be switched off or modified. Rapid cell division is associated with tissue regeneration, but it is also a feature of cancer. It is possible that evolution in humans has suppressed rapid cell division in order to combat cancer at the cost of losing our ability to regenerate tissue. Tantalisingly, salamanders regenerate tissue but hardly ever get cancer.
Feedback is our weekly column of bizarre stories, implausible advertising claims, confusing instructions and more Humans 28 April 2021
But is it art?
In a former life, Feedback’s daily doings regularly took us across a windswept plaza on a university campus that, through no fault of its own, had been built in the 1960s. Adding to a general air of faded cold war chic was a huge, rusting iron sculpture on a concrete plinth, on which the words “Vorsicht! Kunst” had been graffitied in yellow paint.
This was in Germany, we perhaps should have said, but the warning to beware of art has stayed with us. We are reminded of it when we read that a Sotheby’s auction of non-fungible tokens by the crypto-artist Pak has brought in $16.8 million, including a single grey pixel that went for $1.36 million worth of Ether.
Humans 28 April 2021
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Jupiter’s Legacy, on Netflix from 7 May, follows a generation of superheroes handing the torch of civic duty and personal virtue to their children, who are tasked with living up to their reputations. What could possibly go wrong?
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Hard to Break habits are no bad thing, says Stanford University psychologist Russell Poldrack, and instilling the right ones will be crucial for tackling threats to our species’ future. The ability to change our unwanted tendencies will also be vital.
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Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir, author of the 2011 hit
The Martian, once again pits a sole survivor against almost impossible odds. This time, however, the fate of Earth hangs in the balance and our protagonist has amnesia.
Health | Leader 28 April 2021
Vishal Bhatnagar/NurPhoto/Shuttertock
THE covid-19 situation in India is terrible and is likely to get worse. The country has set one new record after another for the most daily coronavirus cases reported in any country. Just as the world was hoping the worst of the pandemic was over, we are seeing its biggest outbreak.
Why is this happening now? The short answer, as with so many key questions about the pandemic, is that no one knows for sure.
On paper, India’s outbreak isn’t that exceptional. It is reporting around 200 daily cases and two deaths per million people, which is similar to the current situations in the US, Germany …